I held a human heart in my hand today. Her name is Rose. She is about my size. She is dead after almost one hundred years of life, and her heart lay still in my hand today. I watch my hand, pulsing with life in its veins under a blue rubber glove, hold another human being’s lifeless heart. As I hold her heart my mind goes blank of all the tidy artistic renderings I’ve spent so many hours studying. I can’t think of which vessel is the pulmonary vein, because I’m too busy thinking that this lifeless heart once pulsed with life. This heart was beating when Hitler took over Germany, when the first atomic bomb exploded, when people first sang the Blues, and even when the Cubs first played at Wrigley Field (1916). Spraying her body with water and pushing her intestines aside to identify vital organs, arteries, and veins in her body, we knead and probe our way through Roses’ skinned body to understand its mysterious and marvelous design. Somewhere between trying to find the hepatic portal vein and her spleen, I notice that her fingernails are still painted a rose colored shade of pink. Carefully and tidily her hands have been prepared. She is a woman. A woman whose heart beat in love, in sadness, in excitement, and in rest for one hundred years. Now, today, I stick my gloved hand into her body and lift out her still heart.
I’ve seen a lot of naked bodies. Going through CNA (nurse assistant) training last spring I changed, shaved, clothed, and bathed more naked bodies than I’d like to recall. I’ve studied dead people in countless history classes. But never, until today, have I gazed so long at the deep depths of the human form. I’m not sure what I thought studying cadavers would feel like. I guess I thought it would be like staring at those human brains floating like alien spaghetti in jars of formaldehyde. I wasn’t quite prepared for the double doors of our Anatomy & Physiology lab to swing open and reveal four body bag laden gurneys. We are instructed to leave a damp towel across the face of our assigned body as we work. My fellow students begin to dig and probe Rose’s body while my mind races with the theological, philosophical, and spiritual questions that come flooding in a giant cataract. Where is her soul? When will Christ return and reunite this woman to her body? What kind of life did she lead? What will happen when she is restored and enjoys a new body? Philosophers and theologians have spilled much ink on these questions. Why didn't I read more in seminary? The Heidelberg Cathecism begins rolling through my mind in its answer to the question -“Christian, what is your only hope in life and in death?.” I begin to recall the words in my mind, "That I am not my own...but belong with body and soul to my faithful Savior..."
“Caroline,” pierces my professor's voice through my reverie. “Pick up the heart and show us the myocardium of the left ventricle.”
“What?,” I reply only having faintly heard her voice.
“Pick up Rose’s heart and open it,” she says again emphatically with little patience.
Five hundred years ago Renaissance artists risked death by probing into the human body. Deep in the labyrinthine crypts of cathedrals the human body was opened up and explored. In 1497 Leonardo da Vinci created the Vitruvian Man in which he sought to depict the human form in perfect porportion. According to the Encylopedia Britannica he saw “the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe" (Read more HERE). Today, in a windowless room in the far corner of an Illinois community college, students barely twenty years old poke and prod Rose’s tiny body. While my mind seems to go blank of all the Anatomy & Physiology I’ve been studying, I can’t help but stand in wonder of what is happening. I held a heart today. A human heart was in my hand.
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)
Q:
Christian, what is your only comfort in life and death?
Christian, what is your only comfort in life and death?
A:
That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.
That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.
My favorite Confession of Faith. I read it to myself often.
ReplyDeletea lack of awe at such moments in the classroom should be as disqualifying as poor grades. thanks for putting your meditations to "paper"
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I, too, enjoy this Heidelberg confession question! One I cling too in times of difficulty especially! I would love to hold the heart and I would certainly be awed at the marvel of life!
ReplyDeleteI once did the same; beheld the stilled body of one who had lived only 10 days at most prior to the day I was entranced by him. I detached his veins from fat and sinew, sawed through his bones, and wondered at the life he had lived. It was a moment in my time that I ruminate on frequently. It was life and death and wonder and the unknowns beyond the now-moment all astride my own breathing and his lack. It was a formative experience for me and it seems to have been for you as well. So much more is gleaned when one looks beyond the obvious, the surface.
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